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I placed you in such an important position in my heart, I let myself become completely vulnerable to you, but of late, all i feel is that you are taking me for granted, and that i am always subordinate to you.

You laughed at my affection for you. I am very hurt, but I cannot even communicate that to you. Because to tell you that I’m hurt will only invite you to say that I’m emotional, but to let it slide invites another such episode and another hurt.

So you left me with nothing to say.

For a simple sentence, you took so much offence that you choose to punish me with your sarcasm, to the point that you laughed at my love for you. I thought you were just in a bad mood previously and acted out in extremes, but your reaction this time is similar, yet it is just so alien to me. This is not what i thought you were.

I tried to rationalize why you reacted this way, and the conclusions i have are so negative of you that there is nothing to say to you. You will never listen, will take offense and probably end the relationship.

A relationship also dies when there is nothing left to say. But i don’t want to hurt you or myself any further. I was hoping for time to heal the hurt, and give me the strength to continue. I guess, it depends on whether if the hurt dissipates faster or the relationship. Either way, not saying anything is less hurtful for both of us.

A while back, my boss sat me down and told me that he was going through a divorce as he had an affair. It was a professional meeting and the statement was made very matter-of-factly.

I mulled over what he said for a few weeks before concluding that as he wasn’t Asian and hence should not be judged by the Asian standards. My sense of the situation was that the British does not associate the same values of devotion, sacrifice and loyalty to the partner and to the families. Hence neither party would consciously avoid having affairs; the Wife is just as likely to have an affair and end the marriage, and there would be no shame or regret, at least not in the Asian context. In this case, my boss just happened to have found happiness elsewhere… first.

While I understood why it happened for my boss, I used believed that I would reject affairs. Being brought up in an ultra conservative environment, and having watched numerous the third-party-is-the-bad-person dramas, I used to believe that I would never let my heart stray this way.

Which made the current situation unbearable.

I’ve met someone a few months ago in Singapore under a business setting.

He’s married.

We’ve only met once.

Due to business dealings we kept in touch.

But I’ve come to realise that we’ve been messaging each other a lot more than necessary for business.

In fact, he’s the first and last (and sometimes the only) person to message me each day.

The messages are friendly, funny and witty.

I enjoy chatting with him very much. We never seem to run out of things to say. We’re open and candid, the content are innocent and all above board.

However a few days ago, while reviewing what we’ve expressed, I’ve realised that my feelings for him are no longer platonic.

I do not know how he feels.

I rely on the belief that he does not feel for me, so as to make it ok for us to continue chatting like that.

Am glad of the physical distance between us.

Though there are days I wonder he should be told… just so that he can stop being nice to me..

The desire to be reckless… so as to stop the heart from sinning further…

I’ve had this blog since 2011, but have not written anything since 2012.

My life have changed dramatically in that time, so much that I wouldn’t have expected to be writing from where I am right now.

In 2011, I started this blog to recover from an operation, and a job lost due to my poor health. In that year, I used this blog to record my travels, a self imposed exile. Told my friends and family that I would be fine soon, though frankly at that time I didn’t think I would really recover. But recover I did.

By 2012 I’ve completed the first marathon of my life, and had a new job that I really liked. The job brought me to London on a secondment which just kept being extended, and extended. So while the banking industry continued to implode due to the financial crisis of 2009, I was doing pretty ok.

Until my grandparents died 10 days apart in 2014. Grandpa passed away suddenly on 22 Jan 2014 from choking on his dentures (what a way to go), and Grandma’s heart gave up on 2 Feb. Suddenly, Dad didn’t seem as strong anymore, and I knew I had to go back home. So I quit my job in London and took up one back home, which didn’t quite work out (left in 6 months, though I knew I would quit by the end of the 1st). Then another job, which was actually really great…though…

An ex-colleague in London told me of a role in another company he’s at, and I jumped at the opportunity of working with him again. So I took a hefty pay cut, left my family (Dad was ok by then…and didn’t like the fussing around him) and plonked myself on a plane back to UK.

The ex-colleague was supposed to be my boss. That lasted all of 3 weeks; he got transferred to head up another team. That was still fine as our teams had to work closely.

His team produced sub-standard work, he was supposed to fix it, he didn’t. I didn’t mean to have to challenge his team’s work, but I couldn’t do my work if I don’t. I used to believe that we will eventually work it out, that was until d he’s decided on a despicable course of action.

His team was caught plotting to “wind me up” at the gym. Somebody overheard them and his teammates were sanctioned. My current boss didn’t tell me about the issue until the incident in Dec 2016. All that while, I thought his teammates were just being socially awkward and tried my best to befriend them, and work with them as best I could. (Is there anyone worse than I am at reading people?)

In Dec 2016, I found out that the ex-colleague falsely accused me of a failure, when his team was the one who caused the issue. It was a deliberate act to bring me down.. The deliberate act broke something in me.

Through other channels, I already knew that his team caused the failure, and that he was personally briefed of that fact 5 hours before he sat down and wrote a very long email to senior management accusing me of bringing down a system.

400 words of false allegations from someone I trusted enough to uproot from home to work with.

It’s winter now in 2017, and I am alone in UK. It feels like 2011 suddenly.